Hrs Cries Foul Over Judge's Order

No Program Exists For Rape Suspect

KISSIMMEE — State social workers cried foul Thursday over a judge's claims that a child rape suspect should have been in a residential treatment program for sex offenders.

The Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services never received an Osceola County court order assigning Philip Wayne Wagner, 21, of Kissimmee, to such a program, officials said.

More importantly, they said, Florida no longer has a sex offender program for adults.

''There is no sexual offender program in this state. There hasn't been one for years,'' said Paul Snead, HRS administrator for District 7 in Central Florida. ''I'm concerned we're at the bottom of the barrel, and everybody is taking pot shots at us.''

Wagner is accused of sexually assaulting a 7-year-old girl Tuesday in a bathroom at Thacker Avenue Elementary School.

An angry Judge Carol Draper, who ordered residential treatment for Wagner in February, said HRS should have received her order.

Draper also said she was told during a sentencing conference that there was a bed for him in a state program, but she said she cannot remember who made the promise. Wagner was convicted of exposing himself to a neighbor.

''If there was a problem with it, why wasn't I told? When I sentenced him, I was told there was a residential treatment program for him,'' Draper said. ''HRS had been told to look into it. I don't remember the exact wording, but they were told to find a place for him.''

Court records show that Draper and Circuit Judge Gary L. Formet Sr. had each made Wagner's placement in state treatment a condition of his probation on separate cases in the past five months.

Formet's order, on a November auto theft conviction, directed state probation officers to work with HRS to find housing for Wagner, who is retarded with an IQ of 63. Draper's order did not specify HRS by name, but she said that is what she meant.

Draper said she is going to insist that HRS, state probation officers and the State Attorney's and Public Defender's offices determine what went wrong. The dilemma posed by Wagner's situation and the lack of treatment programs for sex offenders is an old story to state workers.

HRS runs a residential sex offender program for juveniles, but Wagner's mental retardation would have made him ineligible when he was younger.

The only adult sex offender program used to be in the prisons, where each year about 5,000 sex offenders make up a little more than 10 percent of the state's 48,000 inmates. State budget cuts wiped out that $4.5 million program in the late 1980s.

''There are no formal rehabilitative sex offender programs that we offer. . . . I think it's been two, three years maybe, since we offered anything,'' Laura Levings, a Department of Corrections spokeswoman, said Thursday.

A combination of public help and concentrated police work led to Wagner's arrest Wednesday less than 24 hours after the attack.

Four detectives worked 18 hours nonstop after police learned of the rape about 1 p.m. Tuesday.